D K
E AREA may be perceived as a certain turning point in your work, for since the moment the E AREA project began to be conceived as a specific space, it has also been used as the name for the whole group. Seen from today’s perspective, I consider it as a crucial milestone in your work, which might thus be divided into pre- and post-E AREA.
F D
Back in 1998, the point of the visual turning point was that for the first time we attempted to focus on architecture of the E AREA project, which resembled a university. When I say university, I do not mean it in the sense of certain exclusive education. At that time, on the other hand, I conceived universities as spaces monopolising or laying claims to knowledge, so I imagined new forms of teaching or new forms of communicating information. Looking back, you may definitely interpret the name E AREA, with the letter “E” standing for emotions, ecology, electronics or earth. Then, we were captured and inspired by all that.
D K
I’ve always had a feeling that E AREA was given by your inner tension leading to an alternative way of education. To what extent do you find it important to build alternative spaces aimed at any form of education or self-perfection? I mean spaces independent of any institution. I perceived it as a desire to build your own institution.
F D
First of all, it seemed to me that communicating very interesting information through a text, curves and physical or mathematical equations, is too complicated and I wanted to create a completely intuitive space. At that time, there was a lot of excitement about virtual reality, and we thought it could serve as a suitable tool for communicating information, following the principle of replacing reality. Just imagine that you are observing a process and, instead of it being explained to you with the help of an experience of any kind, you can experience it yourself thanks to the technology… you can experience the percept directly via neuronal communication in virtual reality. In any case, I have always asked myself whether developing systems replacing reality makes sense, and whether there are any other alternative ways more connected with the natural perception of space. It is a matter of chance in which space you emerge or you are born, and what mankind will perceive as natural and artificial in the future. E AREA was a certain culmination of this stage.
D K
How do you perceive this first period in the 1990s, and what do you believe to have been the most characteristic? Suppose you were asked to look back; you started as a sculptor, then became interested in ecology, you gradually left material behind, then E AREA which is architecture, although it should be filled with an idea…
F D
When I remember that, it was 1998, which was particularly important, when I above all attempted to provoke discussion. Quite naively, I called it neuronal discussion, which means discussion not limited to words only. With my team, I considered various technologies linked directly to thoughts. So, we abandoned the term “virtual reality” very soon, since we understood that it leads to nowhere. Mainly due to the fact that it isolates the human being from reality. We realized that it is necessary to create things in harmony. E AREA itself had several developmental stages, ranging from an enormous building to smaller cells, which tend to be connected to a certain educational or scientific center. In essence, we aimed to reflect the area of Prague, which I am attached to in a way; I thought it was interesting to create a center which would attract new ways of thinking owing to its shape and matter. Everyone searches for a space in which they feel good, escapes from it, or on the contrary, they search for it. Thus, the initial stimulus was to create an interesting architectural magnet for people from all over the world. At the same time, there was a desire for discussion and shaping new opinions of the globalised world. Due to the fact that, back in 1998, Prague lacked a developed Internet network, I realized that a center like that must give rise to a certain network; a network of small centers, small interconnected cells. Basically, this was the reason why we were happy to finish the development three years later, since creating a megalomanic center is, in fact, against all natural processes. And that’s what we didn’t want.
D K
We met for the first time just before the e-forum. To me, it was very special, since until then I had perceived you as an artist working with objects and virtual reality, while moving around different forms of art. But in the e-forum, the art began to fade out, thus becoming the discussion or the network itself. Why was the e-forum so important to you as an artist?
F D
In 1998, the first annual international conference Forum 2000 was held. The conference was founded by Václav Havel and Elie Wiesel, and it was there where I met young people, politicians and philosophers thinking in a similar way. René Kubášek, one of the Forum’s main activists, was really helpful to us. It was he who initiated the E AREA’s presentation at the Forum 2000. We took part in the first three years, developing our own accompanying E-forum, reflecting our views and issues from the sphere of digital culture. We complemented the main Forum 2000, in which leading intellectuals, such as Francis Fukuyama or Fritjof Capra, participated, with a very subtle yet extensive network connecting over 300,000 individuals at one moment, which was a huge success in 2001. What was important was the fact that we connected the E-forum with universities, destroying communication barriers and getting the discussion into the network. Over those three years, I really said to myself that the discussion had the power to change something since I was also dissatisfied with the situation in our society. By this, I mean stupidly taking over the already obsolete and out-of-date capitalism (dying elsewhere) in our society. The E-forum discussion was supposed to generate new observation as to how network- and fractal-based thinking society may function.
D K
You often talk about things such as education, whether in connection with E AREA or E-forum. I see in it an inner desire to learn something more. Are your projects based, to some extent, on self-perfection of any kind, or on the desire to overcome barriers?
F D
At the beginning, I said that a certain space gives you the possibility to concentrate on sharing or spreading information. Self-perfection works, quite obviously, as the first stimulus. At the same time, however, when you feel that a certain network is missing in the space we move around in, you attempt to create it. I thought this was natural, or what society needs. It was also one of the impulses for establishing the Digital Media programme at the Faculty of Social Sciences, where we both teach. In the case of the E-forum, it was very pleasant to have created a space which — thanks to electronic media — wiped out the barrier of shyness, the barrier of psychological obstacles, leaving a space where you can express yourself freely.
D K
I have always perceived these projects as, say, intellectual and highly societal. And, in the case of Sakura, suddenly, I had the feeling of a certain turning point — that you needed to delimitate or identify yourself with society. I perceived your need for a critical view.
F D
Towards the E-forum’s end, I realized — and thus concluded naturally — that there was evidence that it was all connected to what might be labelled as a snobbish space, which is no longer truthful but rather exclusive and closed. And that’s something I have never wanted. Yes, it may be said that it was intense techno-optimism that was expressed by the Sakura project, appearing naturally through the Mnemeg and Sembion projects, yet five years after the E-forum. It expressed a technocratic view, searching for harmony between the body and the technologies distorting and hybridizing us. Sakura was all about searching for an escape from such distortion — where freedom has no room, where the technologies create a cage and where our emotions are distorted. It attempted to find a way with the help of a certain techno-mission.
D K
creation is perceived to resonate directly with new technologies. Where does your anger come from then? At least, I thought it was anger…
F D
Sakura, and all other works in essence, originate from network thinking. Yes, it is I who provide the initial impulse, but later, we all seem to be absorbing together, working with ideas as thoughts, as if with matter. One may say that even such collective perception was reflected in Sakura. A critical view of the techno-space is a question of experience, and a question of how I perceived myself — how I change in relation to the environment and to nature. More intensively, I started searching for contact with a natural environment; with scent, wind, and feelings that are primitive and archetypal.
D K
I’m also asking you this because the artist is often alone with their original idea. And as you work on it for some time, you might become isolated. I believe there’s often a tension — between being somewhere alone in peace and quiet, resonating with the environment (whether it’s nature or your surroundings), and on the other hand, reaching outward, toward society, where the work resonates. Do you feel the need to overcome such isolation? Do you want to be heard?
F D
It’s similar to when you go to sleep at night to regain energy, and then communicate during the day and release that energy. The waves of people and society you feel are about the fact that first you absorb this energy and then you filter it so that what you create isn’t confused. The projection into society — the desire to communicate — is just natural, but it must be somehow reflected. It must go through a filter of peace or concentration.
I’ve been making a lot of effort not to produce rubbish. I try to produce what is healthy, what makes room for healthy growth. I don’t long for decadence; I always search for what is fresh. That might be why I seek out new technologies that don’t carry the burden of the past. It’s also why I work with sound and projection — which are extremely immaterial and close to thoughts.
D K
One may perceive it on two levels, which might seem traditionally contradictory. You’re bound to the city — you live in it, and I assume you enjoy its hustle and bustle. And on the other hand, there’s the ecological way of life and your connection to wildness.
F D
At first, I don’t see any contradiction at all — only absolute harmony. Imagine a wild Indian coming from the Amazon to New York, reflecting society through their own perspective. The chaos of the city must be a torture. Whenever I arrive somewhere, what I’m interested in is searching for the absolutely clear view inside myself. I enter the city like stepping into the extreme order of right-angled urbanism.
The wilderness, on the other hand, means extreme movement and the fight for survival. That’s where I feel happy, where I dive into accumulated thinking and draw inspiration from the city. What calms me is the change in light, noises, scents and temperatures of the wilderness — in sharp contrast with the digital quiet of the electronic forest.
D K
To what extent do you attempt to reflect this in your work? At first glance, no such inspiration from the city is visible. For example, you’ve never dealt with street art. But on the other hand, your work is not entirely ephemeral either. When you’re preparing a project — and it’s often a long-term process — can you see the final shape from the beginning?
F D
The most subtle and sensitive things are always born in chaos. They’re recorded by hand, through wrist movements and Chinese ink. When I come to the city, I see the liquid movement of data, which can be recorded by technology.
Take the Sembion project, for example. It’s an organic form stemming from syntactic analysis — it had to be created by someone living in a city; it couldn’t have come from anywhere else. When I was 16, I said to myself that I would never portray reality directly, because it makes no sense. I’ve always been interested in augmented reality — in disturbing the space with strange objects, provoking a different way of thinking.
That means you leave the installation space with neurons in your head layered differently, providing you, generally speaking, with new impulses for your life. Preparation can take years — up to ten years for a single project. I’m not interested in working on many things at once. I want to say to myself: “Yes, this is it. This might be useful or inspirational. It may have the power to disturb the grey mediocrity and stereotypes in society.”
D K
To a large extent, human evolution depends on various institutions. How did you perceive institutions like the university where art is taught? Or an art gallery where many works are displayed? Or an art magazine writing about art? I ask this because you strike me as someone who often positions themselves in contradiction to institutions, keeping your own view. How did you perform at school?
F D
Art is a very peculiar space. You can move around it freely — it’s different from what society tells you you should be like officially. It’s a space where you can truly be extremely free. At secondary school, or at the Academy, or any other institution I attended, I always felt a kind of institutional protection. Nevertheless, I respected individualities and the clever, while speaking out against the bureaucracy that confined us.
So when asked to produce a five-page text, I came up with a single word only. I believe it was my father who brought me up in this way — he was a South American revolutionary. And there’s also been influence from our family’s Sephardic heritage, from Spanish Jewish ancestors.
D K
I think that’s somehow related to the way you delimit yourself from what you call clerical art. When I take it in general, I believe you may have difficulty filling in tables…
F D
Wherever I feel laziness — laziness in thinking — and the stupid reproduction of social models transformed into art, that’s what I call clerical art. Or the art of statistical clerks. I don’t want to sound like I’m quick to condemn anyone, since everyone has the right to do what they want. But there are things where I feel a kind of calculation, a parasitic approach — mediating something that’s already been examined, already undergone a process, and now it’s just further rearranged. Harping on.
It’s like when DJs work with music, sampling it into a new form. That’s absolutely fine. But there are also composers who create. To me, a DJ is a clerk, and a composer is a creator. I’m sorry.
D K
What I also had in mind was that a table is a kind of pattern — and your work lacks exact tables. It’s not something that could be pressed into a scheme. Your work is liquid, variable, in incessant movement. Recently, you’ve also concentrated on architecture — working, on a number of occasions, with so-called blobs. But this dates back to the early 1990s, when you first began using this shape.
F D
Yes, at the turn of 1992 and 1993, the Thomson Digital Image (TDI) company provided us with software as an experimental plug-in. It was originally designed for testing chemical processes, and they wanted to implement it into animation. That was the first time we encountered blob software as a modeling tool.
You could say it marked the beginning of liquid architecture, because the blob simulates instability. Greg Lynn, often called the king of blob architecture, started using it five years later when the software was launched to the market. But these first blob-like objects — attributed to Alias Wavefront in the dictionary of world architecture — had already appeared in the French software we were using in 1992.
When you observe how a person moves in any space, it’s always blob-like, organic. The blob tries to simulate that — to create a form that mirrors liquid, natural movement. We conceived this liquid essence with the E AREA team (though we didn’t use that name yet) as a natural process, similar to how a river flows. These were liquid footprints of human activity in the landscape, shaped by geographic, social, and ecological regularities.
We aimed to pour architecture into the niche — where living space emerges without blindly following right-angled order, which doesn’t even reflect how data spreads through optical fiber, for example. We’re still thinking in terms of car traffic and outdated systems for information flow. We’re staring out windows as if we still expect to see horse carts. But they’re gone. We need to work with liquid bits and data to shape a new city and a new kind of urbanism.
D K
Earlier, you used to work with sculptures. A sculpture or object is bound to a certain material, which might be dangerous at times or environmentally disruptive. Is your move toward software somehow linked to ecology?
F D
Absolutely. Besides the incredible possibilities for intuitive modeling, software has a dematerializing tendency. What you design doesn’t fill up physical space. After 20 or 30 years of work, there’s nothing physical left behind — nothing that exists unless and until you materialize it. You’re not flooding the planet with useless things.
D K
Back to the 1990s — that’s when you started working with something non-material…
F D
First, I was interested in ecology and in perceiving what grows through the invisible. What you don’t perceive has its own genetic code — which could be a generated digital form. Second, I became increasingly drawn to perceiving our mental processes, which are also non-material. They’re immaterial thoughts.
I’m convinced that thought creates matter — though not in a trivial way, as if I think of something and suddenly it exists as wood or soil. The key is that the process of thinking itself creates matter — the things that surround us. The past creates the future. It’s a kind of holo-field that generates both matter and our bodies in the present. What we’re experiencing now is already the past, an echo or reflection of what came before.
D K
So in essence, whenever you create a piece — whether architecture, an object or a program — the idea comes first and you work with it for a long time. But how do you arrive at the final shape? And on the contrary, what’s at the very beginning?
F D
At the beginning, it may be a feeling of the city — a sound, a vibration, or a shiver of any kind. It can be a dialogue with friends, which becomes the starting point for what I call network thinking. I definitely wouldn’t say it’s a single thought in my head that materialises all of a sudden. It’s a network of inspirational sources, which then searches for adequate material to take form.
Already back in the 1990s, I believed — naturally, intuitively, and maybe naively — that software could approach the impalpable feeling of thoughts. It allows you to simulate a nascent process. It’s not about having the matter in front of you, ready-made. It’s as if you irrigate something with words, and the words are the liquid that allows the matter to grow.
All of my projects form a single, continuous structure. They undergo constant modification, spilling into new consistencies, or remaining incomplete in other parts. That continuity is important.
D K
Sembion has several versions. Do you think that contemporary art — or perhaps better put, contemporary works of art — unravel in versions now? That they’re no longer confined to the frame of a specific gallery or fixed context?
F D
Ten projects have been created over ten years — but in fact, they’re all part of a single project. Individual projects, shapes, or installations have always responded to their specific environments, as if flowing into each space. If you tried to map it from the outside, you’d see clear connections between Generatrix, Sembion, or Mnemeg. Essentially, these are different versions of the same thing, just bearing different names.
D K
Can you imagine returning to the very beginning — to painting?
F D
As a child, I used to say to myself that I must learn the technique perfectly — because I felt that my wrist didn’t yet listen to me. But I knew how important it was to master the flow of energy of ideas, so that the hand could eventually become free.
At around sixteen, I was fascinated by Caravaggio. I was experimenting with confrontation — for example, I painted The Burial of St. Lucy in a specular view, just to test my ability to visualise reality. Later, I sprayed that same painting in the style of Jackson Pollock, trying to express that the path forward does not lie in realistic depiction, but in abstract perception. I said to myself: this is the way. And I followed it.
Over the last three years, I’ve been devoted to the technique of Chinese painting, for a simple reason: when you paint with Chinese or Japanese ink on rice paper, every stroke is visible. Every gesture is recorded — whether you intend it or not. During the Fluid project, I went to China to observe masters painting landscapes, bamboo, and lotus flowers. I saw that it’s a technique refined over a thousand years. It allows you to paint in a completely different way than European traditions teach.
I watched how they moved their wrists and hands — they have thousands of ways to lay a sheet of paper, to stroke the brush, to press or release, to vary shades of black. And they are fully aware of what they are doing, engaging in direct, skilled confrontation. It was around then that Fluid 1 came into being, as we searched for archetypal rituals in contemporary society. That’s when I knew that using such an ancient technique was perfect for recording energy.
When I observe so-called primitive tribes or nations, I’m always fascinated by their relationship to what can’t be described — not with mathematics, physics, or language. It’s a relationship with the wind, with a mountain. For them, a mountain is alive. The sun is alive. This is something many Europeans find hard to grasp. For us, the sun is a source of radiation and heat; for them, it’s a living organism.
This relationship is carried through ritual — through movements with specific meaning. In Asian culture, those movements were transformed into kung-fu, or the spiritual gestures of yoga. Among Indigenous peoples, it may be an uncoordinated, chaotic movement — closer to the wind or to scent. What I’m interested in is how this kind of perception still exists in contemporary society. And I realised it shows up, for example, in sport — especially in Formula 1 racing.
I chose Formula 1 as a focus because it combines technology with extreme levels of cooperation. It’s one of the highest expressions of hi-tech collaboration in our society. Let me give an example: when a Formula 1 car pulls into the pit, 30 people move simultaneously within a window of six seconds. Each has a ritualised role, almost like a shamanic movement. And in those six seconds, they recharge the driver — who becomes a medium, viewed by millions.
And now I come to the point. Imagine the enormous energy directed at that driver. That energy is mediated through media technologies. The emotion of victory, within a second, is broadcast across the planet. It’s a huge explosion of invisible force — a wave spreading in a flash. And all this happens thanks to technology. It’s unprecedented in human history.
It feels natural now because of the artificial and digital world we live in. But just imagine: billions of people cheering at once — what does that do to the materialisation of thought? To the matrix of the information field from which we’re born? What does it do to vibration, essence, and even our genetic code?
These are the questions behind my fascination with Formula 1. So, I tried to depict that ritual using Chinese painting — a technique that, in just a few seconds, can express movement and energy, without intellectual interference. It’s like the energy released in a pit stop.
To push it further, I blindfolded myself. I wanted total focus, without distraction. I set myself the task to paint as quickly as I could — but only until the moment a concrete idea entered my mind. Then I stopped.
The painting was then placed in a specially designed case — just like the pilot’s fragile, immaterial body is inserted into the aerodynamic cockpit of the Formula 1 car.